Plastics are key enablers of a circular economy, directly facilitating the circularity of products and improving resource efficiency and sustainability along the value chain. Plastics have a positive impact on a range of circularity levers across product life cycles, including:
- Materials efficiency.
- Energy efficiency.
- CO2 reduction.
- Recyclability.
- Durability.
- Biodegradability.
Improving resource efficiency in key industries
Plastics play a major role in facilitating circularity in some of today’s most important industries. You can read more about the specific ways in which plastics improve resource efficiency in these industries here:
Improving resource efficiency at the end-of-life phase
At the end-of-life phase, plastics remain too valuable a resource to be simply thrown away and should not be landfilled and most certainly NOT littered.
The plastics industry is committed to appropriate actions to stop the landfilling of plastics (and other recyclable and recoverable post-consumer waste) and the establishment of collection schemes that facilitate the full recovery of plastics. Such systems should include collection for on-the-go packaging as well as packaging from households and commercial and industrial premises. It is important that they align with modern sorting infrastructure and improved recycling and recovery processes in order to exploit the fullest potential of this precious resource. Furthermore, a focus on harmonised collection schemes will result in higher quality sorted waste streams that produce high quality recycled plastics which when placed on the market will further stimulate markets for their increased use throughout Europe.
PlasticsEurope is committed to supporting such developments with its specialist expertise through an open dialogue with all relevant stakeholders and the general public, supported by fact-based information.
Read more in Zero plastics to landfill.
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